Miranda Revue pluridisciplinaire du monde anglophone / Multidisciplinary peer-reviewed journal on the English- speaking world 15 | 2017 Lolita at 60 / Staging American Bodies Singing and Painting the Body: Walt Whitman and Thomas Eakins’ Approach to Corporeality Hélène Gaillard Electronic version URL: http://journals.openedition.org/miranda/10506 DOI: 10.4000/miranda.10506 ISSN: 2108-6559 Publisher Université Toulouse - Jean Jaurès Electronic reference Hélène Gaillard, “Singing and Painting the Body: Walt Whitman and Thomas Eakins’ Approach to Corporeality”, Miranda [Online], 15 | 2017, Online since 18 September 2017, connection on 16 February 2021. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/miranda/10506 ; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/miranda. 10506 This text was automatically generated on 16 February 2021. Miranda is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Singing and Painting the Body: Walt Whitman and Thomas Eakins’ Approach to Co... 1 Singing and Painting the Body: Walt Whitman and Thomas Eakins’ Approach to Corporeality Hélène Gaillard Introduction 1 It seemed only normal that at some point Walt Whitman, who claimed to be the poet of the body, met painter Thomas Eakins, known for being a careful observer of anatomy. Both living in the Philadelphia/New Jersey area with a similarly complex relationship with their audience, the two men esteemed each other highly. What they shared was a deep fascination for the body and this passion caused them much scandal and disapproval. After they first met in Camden in 1887, Thomas Eakins often visited Whitman both to photograph and paint him. The poet admired Eakins’ work and claimed that he “never knew of but one artist, and that’s Tom Eakins who could resist the temptation to see what they think ought to be rather than what is” (Goodrich 123). Like Whitman, Eakins was committed to realism and wanted to give a truthful rendition of the human body. Although critics still disagree on this matter (Folsom 1997, 33), photographs from Eakins’ 1880s naked series showing an elderly man looking a lot like Whitman seem to indicate that Eakins might have seen everything there was to see about the poet. If those photographs are of Whitman, they are certainly one of the rare examples of pictures of a 19th century writer posing in the nude. But the simple fact that this is an accepted possibility testifies to the poet’s unique apprehension of the body. Eakins’ own search for the naked truth led him to apply to himself what he taught his students, namely not to be ashamed of one’s corporeality, to acknowledge it as man’s ultimate truth and to master it so as to better depict it. To the artist, there was “no impropriety in looking at the most beautiful of Nature’s works, the naked figure” (Griffin 80). However, his aesthetic principles led him to be expelled from the Pennsylvania Academy of Art in 1886 for having used nude models in his classes. Miranda, 15 | 2017 Singing and Painting the Body: Walt Whitman and Thomas Eakins’ Approach to Co... 2 2 If Eakins and Whitman had a vision of the flesh that dramatically differed from that of their contemporaries and shocked their audiences, they shared a common understanding of the body and together paved the way for a modern way of looking at physical appearances. The new perception they offered in their artworks also signaled a change in social terms: seen as the epitome of democracy, the flesh and how people thought of it became to them the symbol of equality. This paper will examine the similarities in Eakins’ and Whitman’s approaches to corporeality and the similar strategy they adopted to impose a new vision of the body in American culture. Although previous research has looked into the connection between the two American artists, this article aims at being a comprehensive study of the resonance of corporeal matters in Eakins and Whitman’s art. After focusing on the link between medical progress and the two artists’ aesthetics, this study will explore how Whitman and Eakins revised the status of the body in their art and will then analyze how they attempted to give corporeality a new social significance. Reconsidering the Body 3 Starting with the heroic males of 6th century BC Greek art and rediscovered during the Renaissance, the nude in art was challenged in the Victorian age. In the Gilded Age, the depiction of human figures echoed the moral values of modesty and propriety of an era marked by scientific progress and looking for self-improvement. Nudity was hence rare in the American art of the second half of the 19th century. However, as the classical ideals of perfection and order defined a proper manner of representing bodies, a distinction between nudity and nakedness1, sensuality and pornography was made in order to continue enjoying human forms. In 1884, a New York court ruled that “mere nudity in painting or sculpture is not obscenity,” but the Woman's Christian Temperance Union still pressured art institutions into rejecting all kinds of representations—be they nude or naked—in art (Parker 114). Even though disclosing the reality of the human body was the object of the period’s scientific study, the Victorian approach to corporeality was still highly conservative and did not benefit from the redefinition of biology promoted by scientists. Major advances in medical science occurring throughout the 19th century marked the beginning of modern medicine. Charles Darwin’s breakthrough in biology changed the way people perceived the supremacy of the human being, Louis Pasteur proved that microorganisms could cause diseases, and Claude Bernard introduced the careful observation of pathology thus ensuring scientific objectivity in the medical field. These groundbreaking discoveries altered the romantic and religious apprehension of the body. Moreover, the development of new medical tools such as X-rays to facilitate surgery triggered the idea that bodies, just like machines, could be fixed if one had the right instruments. Although the main contributions came from Europe and more particularly from France, significant advances occurred on the other side of the Atlantic. The discovery of anesthesia in Boston in 1846 was a major achievement that turned European attention to American practices. Major innovations equally happened during the Civil War, which allowed a better treatment of gunshot wounds and the development of medical statistics and records (Porter 154-202). 4 Unsurprisingly, both Whitman and Eakins carefully followed the development of science and they translated their interest into their works. In a study of the poet’s Miranda, 15 | 2017 Singing and Painting the Body: Walt Whitman and Thomas Eakins’ Approach to Co... 3 curiosity for science, Harold Aspiz extensively surveyed the various sciences that influenced Whitman’s thinking (Aspiz 216-232). To some critics, Whitman’s approach to science was hindered by his religious faith and his beliefs in pseudoscience. Yet, his consideration for an empirical method led him to praise scientific principles: “Hurray for positive science, long live exact demonstration!” (LG 25) Whitman pays tribute to science in Leaves of Grass which he acknowledges in a letter to naturalist John Burroughs as “the first attempt at an expression in poetry […] to give the wonder and the imagination a new and true field—the field opened by scientific discovery” (Burroughs 56). As a self-taught man, Whitman got acquainted with science through popular articles and his journalistic work sometimes included reviews of new discoveries among which Alexander von Humboldt’s Cosmos: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe (1845), N. F. Moore’s Ancient Mineralogy (1859), George Combe’s The Principles of Physiology (1836), William Paley’s Natural Theology (1809) and Elias Loomis’ Elements of Natural Philosophy (1859) (White 7-30). To Stovall who also studied Whitman’s scientific contribution, “there is no evidence in the poems of the 1855 edition that anything more than the romance of science had interested him seriously” (Stovall 153). It can be objected that Whitman’s consideration of science remained auxiliary as exemplified by his conclusion that “scientific facts are useful yet they are not my dwelling” (LG 25). Yet, the body, medicine and biology were fields that deeply concerned him and were in fact his dwelling; as such, they significantly permeated his art. This approach is also central in the evaluation of Whitman’s placement within the romantic tradition. It testifies to the poet’s will to assign an American character to romanticism so as “to give something to our literature which will be our own.” In this case, it was the consideration for science and empirical observation that shaped the transcendentalist nature of Whitman’s poetry. Devoted to the understanding of the human body, Whitman deplored the horrors of primitive surgery in his journalism. He strongly supported the evolution of medicine that protected the integrity of the “sacred” body by avoiding amputation and monitoring deliveries. His volunteer service in hospitals during the Civil War reinforced his beliefs in the urgent need for medical progress. The poet’s fascination for the sacredness of the body is extensively voiced in Leaves of Grass: as the only poetic work of its era that refers more than two hundred times to the body and includes a full description of body parts, the collection of poems testifies to Whitman’s position as the poet of the body, if not the medicine poet. This peculiar stance for 19th-century poetry was also evidenced by the illustration for the original edition, a photo engraving depicting a relaxed middle-aged man who shared nothing with the superior, intellectual beings poets were supposed to be. From the first few lines, Whitman’s poetic persona makes it clear that Leaves of Grass is corporeal poetry: it is not sung by a voice but expressed through the physicality of the tongue.